This is insane.

I'm nearly at 1k (like less than 50 words off) and it's only 4am.

15,773 / 80,000 (19.0%)

Not so good, but the AWC is still over 900 words a day.

Quiet day today. Wrote 5200 words. Did not finish the book. Went to see Iron Man again. It stood up to a second viewing. Still dying for Pepper as Iron Maiden, plz. Want it on DVD so I can make more icons.

Also watched Hellboy again. Love that movie. Have it on DVD. May make icons. :)

Bed now.

ytd wordcount: 192,200
miles to Minas Tirith: 390.9

(x-posted from the essential kit)

14,967 / 80,000 (18.0%)

Day 16 of '150 days: a book or bust.' Average Word Count, henceforth known as AWC, is 935.something. It's higher than the last time I calculated it.

I think it is wrong that the fact that eva's going so well is making me increasingly neurotic. It's supposed to make me happy and feel creative and all that, right?

This is way early because I'm heading from here to a friend's place for a very late dinner, and don't expect to be home until past midnight.

Bloody hell, I’m tired. I’m sure it’s a combination of having stepped my exercise up from nothing* to Quite A Lot over the last two weeks, and simply sleeping less because it’s lighter out and so I wake up earlier. But damn, I’m *tired*. I may try giving myself a day off from exercise tomorrow, although that’s hard to do, because once I’ve got a goal in mind (current goal: walk 6 miles a day. average achieved goal over the last 2 weeks: 5.75 miles a day.) it’s very hard to shake the idea that it’s negotiable. That it is not, in fact, set in stone, but more of a moving target. This mindset, now that I think about it, may be why I don’t seem to be terribly good at having hobbies. I seem to think I need to put 100% into everything all the time. :)

Anyway. Knackered, was the point there. Left the house to do my writing today, because I was falling asleep at the keyboard, and got 5 or 6 pages written, plus what I think is a reasonably detailed outline for the remainder of the book. I’m now trying to convince myself I can stay awake to type in what I wrote today, and spend a bit more time finishing a scene and … yeah. I should do it today, because if I wait til tomorrow it’ll feel like a day’s work tomorrow and then I won’t get anything more done. And I’m so close to finished with the whole thing…

Last night was very nice. We trundled over to Sammy & Myles’s and visited with them and Kate, and everyone seems well. Well, for the value of “well” that involves 3 of the 5 adults present (and apparently at least one of the children, but the children were in bed, so not technically *present*) having colds and feeling a bit like death warmed over. :) But we had a good time! :)

Okay. If I go to work I can probably get quite a lot done by 5, and maybe if I go easy on the exercise tomorrow, I can take all my energy and throw it into finishing this book. *trundles off*

*suricattus would rightfully point out that in fact “nothing” was walking 2-3 miles a day and that perhaps I oughtn’t knock it.

miles to Minas Tirith: 386.8

(x-posted from the essential kit)

13,942 / 80,000 (16.0%)

I'm at nearly 14k and have 3 days worth of a timeline.

This is very bad. And the book chapterified** itself again.


This isn't Eva, who's quite straight. This is Eva's boy*.

I actually have my hair in a fat braid down my back--this is news because though my hair is long, it usually isn't long enough to braid. Well, it is long enough to braid, but I just don't usually like the look of it braided unless it's long enough.   

*He thinks he's a man, but since I'm annoyed because he's rather 2-D at the moment, he's a boy.

**Chapterified: past tense of Chapterify, which means the natural and spontaneous act of a book breaking into chapters.

I completely forgot that I had an interview going up at Dear Author today. It’s my First Sale Story, which I still think is pretty funny. :) (Dear Author also gave me a quite nice review of TQB, which I thought was, well, nice of them. :))

I actually wrote some New Material today. Only about 1500 words, and I ended up moving what had been the end of this chapter into another chapter, so now I’ve got 10 or 15 pages to write to finish this chapter. Again. But then I’ve also only got that much, probably, to finish the next one, and I’ve got 2700 words or so of stuff I’ve already written that goes into either the next one or the chapter after that, and…and, well, look, I’ve only got 3 squares of the Novelist’s Event Horizon Chocolate left, so I can’t have more than 3 chapters left.

Anyway, I’ve stopped writing for the day but I’m feeling quite enthusiastic about writing tomorrow. There’s a lot of stitching together left to do, but there’s enough material already written that maybe it won’t be too traumatic. I think I’ll walk less tomorrow, and write more.

Now, however, I think I’ll go throw myself on Ted’s mercy and plead for dinner, because SO HUNGRY!

ytd wordcount: 185,900
miles to Minas Tirith: 380.6

(x-posted from the essential kit)

I saw this over at League of Reluctant Adults and thought what a great way to procrastinate! I think I’ll do one too!: a summary of my TBR list. I’ve gotten mine down to around 40 books, so this isn’t an entirely impossible meme to play around with. (Mind you, I’ve done that by setting a moratorium on buying new books last *August* until we had at least half the TBR shelf cleared. I’ve bought _no books_ (um, except the 3 I got Trent to buy for me in the States) since last November, which month was excepted because we went to WFC.)

( my tbr list )

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Angela Benedetti at romancingblog:

If the evil king who rules the land goes around every Sunday slaughtering peasants for sport, who’s doing the work as the working-class population dwindles? Who’s raising the crops and tending the animals and making the pots and chairs and horseshoes? For that matter, what’s preventing the peasants from high-tailing it out of there? If sticking around meant a good chance of being murdered by my own ruler, I personally would take my chances with any border guards, no matter how tough. They can’t surround the whole country — just ask the INS.

Wonderful post.

Note to self: sort out your next post today. joelysue's already okayed it, so what are you waiting for?

I started making icons last night before “The Invisibles” came on tv, and came back upstairs to finish one off before bed after the show, and, er, note to self: I should not start making icons at 10 at night. I got to bed before midnight, but only because I forcibly turned the computer off. :) Iron Man icons, all from the trailers or promo shots, so no spoilers. They’re goodies for rhienelleth and for zootdingo, mostly. :)

( icons this way )

(x-posted from the essential kit)

It just hit me whilst writing the previous post.

I want to have Average Word Count in my Excel sheet too. It would be a good way for me to track whether my writing speed is falling or increasing.

I might start putting the numbers into an Excel sheet now, rather than do it all in one shot when I finally get around to playing with it.

12,660 / 80,000 (15.0%)

It's strange. I'm having ideas on how to restructure the story, and I'm making comments as I go, including this one:
But I'm not having any 'lets just toss this out and start a new draft' feelings yet. O.O

I'm still waiting for the proverbial pile of bricks to fall on my head.

Also, Day 14. This means that whilst my average word count is falling to just above 900 words a day, I'm still writing over 1% a day--assuming I stick to an 80k word count.

I have rewritten the hard part! I–

…holy shit, guys. I just got email from my editor. You know how I asked if, y’know, you could try to send THE QUEEN’S BASTARD back to print before the end of May?

You did it. It’s going back to press, “based on early good sales.”

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, *thank you*, all so very much. I’m genuinely sitting here stunned and teary-eyed and sniffly, because wow. *Thank* you.

Um. Jeez. Uh. What was I talking about? Rewriting the hard part! I managed to get the bit I’d skipped done, and while it could use a little more polishing, it’s done! I’ve got about five chapters left to revise, and then … I don’t know, fifty or seventy-five pages more to write (and the prologue to rewrite, got to remember to do that) and then the book is done. And gosh, for some reason, I’m feeling REALLY INSPIRED to go do my revisions right now, so I think I’m gonna go do that. o.o

*reels off, stunned*

miles to Minas Tirith: 375.3

(x-posted from the essential kit)

Girls from Bitch Club: You are boring.
Eva: I'm not. You are merely lumps of clay, and I'm actually a character now.
GfBC: You have delusions of grandeur.
Eva: You're just jealous because of the attention she's giving me.
GfBC: Hah! She's been interested in us before. She was reading our WIP and she was smiling and enjoying herself.
Eva: Yeah? She needs a break sometimes. I accept that. I mean, our pace is over 900 words a day right now.
GfBC: So what? She's thinking of not bothering to send you out once she's finished revisions.
Eva: It's not because of me. It's because she quails at the thought of writing query letters, proposals and outlines. She's trying to figure out a good way not to write application letters and such at the moment. Nothing's new there. She'll probably try to do the same with you if she ever decides to write you lot.
GfBC: Oh she will, and then she'll put you aside under the bed where all unpublished WIPs go.
Eva: She won't. She'll send me out into the world. As for you lot, well, good luck getting out of her head and into the computer screen first!

11,832 / 80,000 (14.0%)

I think I'm slowly sinking into the Mud of the Middle.

halseanderson's planning on doing a writing challenge starting July 1st:


Technically, I write more than that every day already, but I'm signing up anyway. I'm at school, and I'm heading home mid-June, so my schedule will change and I might need a kick in the butt then. Especially since I'm writing a book in 150 days, maybe less.

Hey, next time I'll do my own challenge:

Work would be easier if it was always just about the writing. I’ve spent the last couple hours doing *work*, but this is “answer craploads of email and go through a million files” kind of work, which is just as wearying and time-consuming as actually writing, but doesn’t end up with more pages piled up on–

OH IT’S WEDNESDAY! HOORAY! I *thought* it was Wednesday, but then I got it in my head it was Thursday! I have a whole extra day! Wow, that makes me feel better!

Ahem.

–anyway. Doesn’t end up with more pages piled up on the “this half of the manuscript is finished” side of the revision stack. I’d *hoped* the whole manuscript would be on that half of the stack by today, but, well, nope. I’m more than halfway through, though. *chugga chugga chugga*

Oh, God, wow, I’m all light and frothy and happy now that it’s only Wednesday. I don’t feel nearly so far behind or, oddly, nearly so panicked about getting some half-beyond-my-control work done.

Back on my head!

(x-posted from the essential kit)

10,780 / 80,000 (12.0%)

The pace has slowed a little, but it's chapterified itself again. Okay, more than a little, but it's still more than two pages.

Via cyranocyrano, l2g provides a warning from an iPod update:

THE iPOD SOFTWARE AND iPOD SOFTWARE UPDATES ARE NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE iPOD SOFTWARE OR iPOD SOFTWARE UPDATES COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

I have remembered that making icons was going to be one of my hobbies. I actually really like making them, even though I’m not nearly the artist some people are. That’s okay.

( Iron Man icons behind the cut. )

(x-posted from the essential kit)